Being, perhaps, the most anticipated virtual reality game to date, Valve’s Half-Life: Alyx is expected to greatly increase interests towards VR gaming and VR hardware. In a bid to attract attention to their latest hardware, HTC and Valve are both bundling the game with some versions of their headsets.

For a limited time (while supplies last, to be more specific), HTC’s Vive Cosmos Elite bundle for $899/€999 will come with a free digital copy of Valve’s Half-Life: Alyx. Meanwhile, Valve itself will bundle the title with its Index VR headset (which costs $499, or $749 with controllers, or $999 with controllers and additional base stations), or almost any of its additional components, according to The Verge.

Valve’s Half-Life: Alyx is a game that exclusively works with virtual reality headsets and it is compatible with Facebook’s Oculus VR, HTC’s Vive, Microsoft’s Windows Mixed Reality, and Valve’s Index platforms. Since the title is not compatible with non-VR setups, it will inevitably attract fans of the franchise to virtual reality.

Valve says that its Half-Life: Alyx was developed using Index hardware, though bundling the game with HTC’s Vive Cosmos shows that the two companies are still relatively close, a relationship that goes back to the creation of the original Vive headset.

No one here has contested the obvious retention problem with VR. Not even valve, who have an interest in VR, make strong statements about its future.

That doesn't mean some people aren't going to buy a VR kit for HLA. Some certainly are. Not many. Importantly, no one anywhere is saying many will or that this is some inflection point for adoption. Valve is pushing the needle by putting in the hard work for that to even be a possible future.Reply

I've put 2 hours in today on my ancient Oculus and it works awesome. Since I only have a 980 (not even Ti) the lower res Oculus is more adequate than something higher-res that would choke my videocard.

But I probably wouldn't have bought the game if I didn't already have an Oculus (which was admittedly collecting dust over the last two years - I bought it when Facebook dropped the price drastically in 2017)Reply